Thursday, 13 November 2014

Most of us
go through life trying to reconcile the rational part of our brain with our
emotional gut instinct. You know you really
should go for that run, but something
tells you that it’s going to be very cold and unpleasant out there tonight and
it just isn’t going to happen.

Ed Miliband
really should be the next Prime
Minister.All the electoral arithmetic is in his favour because of the nature
of the first-past-the-post electoral system and the concentration of his
traditional voters in towns and cities. He can actually win an outright
majority with a lower share of the popular vote than you might imagine.
Probably somewhere in the mid-30s. Not too much of an ask after five years of
austerity, you might think.

Ed has come
up with a decent set of policy proposals too. In his speech and subsequent
emails today, he outlines plans to reverse the Tory tax cuts for millionaires,
to freeze electricity bills, reform the banks and raise the minimum wage. Amen
to all that.

But there’s
a problem.Although he is set to win on paper. many people don't feel it in their water. This includes, of course, three quarters of the Parliamentary Labour Party, which
is why we’ve had such a dose of the pre-election heebie-jeebies over the past
10 days.

Sometimes,
the whole can be less than the sum of its parts. Ed Miliband is the guy who ticks all the
boxes when you present him as a future boyfriend. He has a steady job, no
criminal convictions, minds his Ps and Qs and seems very respectable. But your
mum thinks you can do better. It’s not that she can fault him on any specifics.
It’s just that he’s lacking a certain something and she isn’t able to put her
finger on it.

Politics is
absolutely brutal like this. Miliband is a decent man with worthy motives, but
when he says he sees a Prime Minister staring back at him in the mirror, some cynics may start to wonder whether pressure of work has delayed his annual check-up with
the optician.

There’s a
story being spun by his minders right now, which goes something like this: Ed
is the victim of a concerted smear campaign because he is challenging vested
interests. Here’s a man who threatened
the media with regulation, told the energy companies they’d have to freeze
their prices and that he’d crack down on banking excesses. No wonder, his
supporters say, he’s become a scapegoat.

In pursuing
this argument, Ed’s supporters are in danger of treating the electorate as
fools. While I’m not naive enough to think that these vested interests are
praying for a Labour victory, I don’t for one moment believe they see Miliband
as the slightest threat.

Take the
freezing of energy prices for 18 months, for instance. Some big players in the sector have already
adjusted their charges to take account of the possible imposition of a new
regime. And they are so profitable that they can happily wait until 2017 for
another price hike. The proposed
regulation of the press after Leveson failed to materialise and I don’t for one
moment think that Labour would prioritise this after a victory in 2015.

Think back
to 1997. Tony Blair won the support of the media and the wider business establishment
despite pledging a windfall tax on the ‘excess profits of the privatised
utilities’. Funny how he could tackle vested interests and win a landslide
victory, isn’t it?

Looking back
at the manifesto of 1997 though, one of the most striking things about it is actually
the positive feel of all the pledges and policies. It was highly aspirational
in a motherhood and apple pie kind of way. Contrast this with the first four promises on my email from Miliband
today, which are to ‘scrap, scrap, scrap and reverse’ things that the Tories
have done.

Ed is still
too much speaking to the core Labour supporter who hates everything the coalition
stands for. Sadly, it’s the strategy that brought defeat to Labour in the 1980s
rather than the strategy which brought them victory in the 1990s. So while my
rational brain keeps telling me that common sense will prevail and the maths
will work itself out, a butterfly menagerie is busily flapping away in my
stomach.

Thursday, 21 August 2014

In the world of realpolitik,
your enemy’s enemy is, of course, your friend.

Funny to think that we’re now best of buddies with President
Assad in Syria, because his murderous regime – although reprehensible – has
decided to get stuck into the fight against the self-styled Islamic State. We
hate these fundamentalists more than we hate the smartly-dressed Syrian strongman,
although ironically the growth of ISIS was actually fuelled by our lack of
willingness to support the more legitimate opposition to Assad’s authoritarian
regime.

If you’re confused, it’s not really that surprising. The
shifts of allegiance in the turbulent landscape of 2014 have all the hallmarks
of an Orwellian dystopia. One day, Oceania is at war with Eurasia. The next, it’s
in alliance with Eurasia to defeat Eastasia.

Politicians such as David Cameron are not really cut out for
the international challenges faced by the UK in 2014. The British Prime Minister's politics are shaped by the bluster that
comes with privilege and are completely lacking in substance. Platitudes on the
economy and immigration are one thing. But when it comes to major international
threats, he seems very lightweight in comparison with his immediate predecessors.

President Obama has more of an idea of the threats and a
better sense of what is needed to tackle them, but is caught in an impossible
situation. The American public’s appetite for military intervention is
understandably at rock bottom and he’s forced to couch any justification for
action in terms of US national interests. When he first authorised airstrikes against
Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq, it was ostensibly to protect American
diplomats in the city of Irbil. Stopping the genocide of the Yazidis was
presented as a nice bonus.

The barbaric execution of US journalist James Foley might
possibly be a game changer, but there are many limitations on what we can reasonably
expect Obama to do. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if Islamic State could be
turned back by the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters? We can pretend that all they
need are some American and European arms and a few token airstrikes, but any
gains will be short-lived. Islamic State will continue to expand to fill the
vacuum that exists in Iraq and capitalise on the chaos that prevails in Syria.
As they gain in confidence, they will try to destabilise Lebanon and Jordan.

It could be argued that there was only one bigger mistake
than sending British and American troops into Iraq in 2003 and that was to take
them away. The sectarian Shiite leadership in Baghdad has been hopelessly
incompetent and managed through its deliberate actions to alienate large
sections of the Sunni population. It’s this discontent which acts as oxygen for
Islamic State as it charges through the region.

IS will not be stopped until it is confronted by a superior
military force. There are really only three candidates.

The first is Iran, which will probably act if it looks as if
the whole of Iraq is under threat and Shiite holy sites are being destroyed.
The sectarian conflict which might ensue would be disastrous.

The second is Israel. Although preoccupied by its bloody conflict with the Sunni
militants of Hamas in Gaza (and the latent threat of the Iranian-backed Shiites
in Lebanon’s Hezbollah), Israel is well aware of the potential dangers posed by
ISIS. The long-term objective of the most fanatical supporters of the ‘Caliphate’
is, after all, to head to Jerusalem. I doubt very much that Israel will act
until such time as they perceive a very direct threat, but they will be watching
developments closely.

The third option is a coalition of the willing, ideally
under the auspices of the United Nations. In most instances, it’s very
difficult to imagine any unanimity among the permanent members of the Security
Council. Relations with Russia are at an all-time low because of the situation
in Ukraine. But the fanaticism of Islamic State is anathema to Moscow, which
has had its own issues with Islamic fundamentalism. China has faced terrorism from alienated Muslim
minorities and, perhaps more significantly, has extensive economic interests in the
Middle East and Africa.

Could it be that the threat posed by Islamic State is the
one thing on which all the major powers might actually agree? It's possible that with time, people will come together. But time is the one thing we probably lack.